ABC called Roseanne Barr's tweet about former Barack Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett “abhorrent” and “repugnant” when canceling Barr's show on Tuesday, but the network did not use another word: “racist.”
Barr's tweet, posted earlier in the day, read, “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”
Some media outlets described the message as “racially charged.”
Danielle Campoamor, a Romper editor and Bustle columnist, captured the sentiments of many Twitter users when she cast avoidance of the term “racist” against the backdrop of other, ongoing debates about word choices in the press.
In recent days, actor John Cusack and others have pounced on a tweet by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman that fact-checked “demonstrable falsehoods” by Trump. The complaint — a recurring one — is that journalists are too reluctant to label Trump's many untrue claims “lies.”
Why do the president's critics care about the semantics? Campoamor's tweet offers a clue: It is not merely about Trump and the word “lie”; it is about a broader sense that the media are caving to euphemistic language that bubble-wraps dangerous developments.
The grievance is valid, in some cases. Barr's comparison between Jarrett and an ape played on an old and clearly racist trope. There is no need to find an alternative description.
Trump's false statements are not always so easily categorized, however.
“This is where it gets difficult, in terms of the word 'lie,' versus just explaining what things are,” Haberman said Tuesday on CNN. “He is often confused. He often doesn't know the facts as he's talking; he just talks.”
There is a difference between being clueless and being intentionally deceptive. Because journalists cannot read Trump's mind, they sometimes balk at the word “lie,” because its usage suggests knowledge of the president's thoughts.
In 2016, the Times's executive editor, Dean Baquet, discussed with NPR's Steve Inskeep the newspaper's willingness to attribute “lies” to Trump in certain instances:
BAQUET: I think the moment for me was the birther story, where he has repeated for years his belief that President Obama was not born in the United States. That's not an obfuscation; that's not an exaggeration. I think that was just demonstrably a lie, and I think that “lie” is not a word that newspapers use comfortably.
INSKEEP: Sure, and let's talk about why that is. When I think about the word “lie,” it seems to me different than even saying something is false or wrong, because when you say “lie,” you are suggesting you know the person intentionally told an untruth. You feel you know their mind.
BAQUET: And I think that was the case with birther[ism]. I think to say that that was a “falsehood” wouldn't have captured the duration of his claim, to be frank, the outrageousness of his claim. I think to have called it just a falsehood would have put it in the category of the usual political fare, where politicians say, “My tax plan will save a billion dollars,” but it's actually a half a billion and they're using the wrong analysis. This was something else. And I think we owed it to our readers to just call it out for what it was.
The Washington Post uses the word “lie” selectively, in cases of clear deception.
In the case of the birther conspiracy, Trump forfeited his benefit of the doubt by repeating a debunked theory over and over. He could not plausibly claim to have been confused or just talking; he was obviously lying.
Other times, however, Trump's level of knowledge and state of mind are hard to ascertain. In such cases, Nieman Journalism Lab director Joshua Benton recently suggested, perhaps news outlets could call Trump's false statements “lies” without calling him a liar.
Another proposal came from the New Yorker's Adam Davidson, who contended that journalists might not know whether specific claims qualify as lies but do know, based on Trump's track record, that the president could be described accurately as a liar.
News outlets have, in general, gotten bolder about labeling Trump's “lies,” but the debate about how bold is bold enough rages on.